On Wed, Jun 24, 2009 at 1:06 AM, Pat Allan <p...@freelancing-gods.com> wrote: > In Ruby, open-source is de rigueur. If you write something useful to > others, can package it into a plugin or gem, and it's not unique/ > important to clients, then often it'll be open sourced.
Do you think this will ever come back and bite the community in the arse? It's happened before in the Perl community, where a company threatened to have a module removed from core because it was written in company time and released without their knowledge. I suspect that many of the open source libraries out there were created on company time and released by developers who don't understand the implications of IP/copyright law. Personally, I try to make sure that my freelance contracts allow me to retain ownership of generic deliverables such that they can be released into the public domain (where appropriate). That kind of arrangement seems to be frowned upon by the bulk of companies hiring contractors, mainly because the boilerplate contracts their lawyers give them attempt to re-assign all IP away from the contractor. Usually I'm able to swing them around by explaining that if all my clients retained 100% ownership of IP then I wouldn't be able to bring any useful IP to the table and projects would take substantially longer. But practically, they know that they're going to need to get their lawyers to draft a non-standard contract which costs more money than finding another contractor who's less particular about IP ownership. Perhaps a public-domain set of licenses like the Creative Commons for IP contracts could help motivate companies to accept mutually beneficial IP ownership terms? Cheers, Nathan de Vries --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself: http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia/browse_thread/thread/99938a0fbc691eeb To post to this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
